FEBRUARY PLOTTING MEME

[returnjourney]

FEBRUARY PLOTTING MEME

Welcome to the Return Journey's first plotting meme!

In plotting memes, we share what we're doing next, our dream storylines, and any gentle workshopping on tricky subjects or character choices — essentially a CR Meme with an optional smidge of How's My Driving.

These memes are not mandatory, but they are highly encouraged because it's a place to plan CR and communicate your character arc in a way that can get others involved with yours. They're meant to be low pressure and high yield. When in doubt, ask questions!

Every month, we offer a few different prompts or character-building questions. These are entirely optional; you can absolutely just fill in the base form if you want.

<b>Player:</b> <b>Contact:</b> <b>Notes:</b> Time zone, speed, and/or any other habits you want people to know. What do you like or frequently talk about? <b>Character:</b> <b>Canon:</b> <b>Status:</b> Warden or Inmate <b>Info:</b> Give us a brief rundown on your character! What kind of CR do they offer? <b>Plotting:</b> What have they been up to? Any plans? Recent open posts or threads? <b>Goals:</b> Do you have any goals in game? Topics you want to explore? Desired CR? <b>Etc:</b> Anything else!

Monthly Prompts

This month we're asking questions themed around consequences.

Think about the thing that your character desires most — if they failed to fulfill that desire, what would the consequence be? Does it change how they pursue their desire? Is it entirely personal, or beyond them, impacting others?

What consequences does your character need to grow? Consequences are crucial to telling a character arc for both inmates and wardens. Without them, there can't be stakes or tension, and without stakes or tension, there's no impetus to grow. What's a kick in the teeth your character needs? What are they robbing themselves of when they try to avoid these consequences?

How do consequences affect your character externally and internally? How do they react? What kinds of consequences are intolerable or tolerable, necessary or unnecessary?

Comments

[lessandmorethanhuman]

"They must think there's something he needs to make up for-- and he definitely does! --but if Alex just acts like a normal guy most of the time and the "bad stuff" he talks about having done seems morally justified, Loki's going to go "oh so this is all bullshit again, there are no standards, it's just random people" and that's where he'd bluescreen."

Dropping the initial vial was absolutely not justified. Real!Alex only did so because he was pissed about being caught. It's very clear he DROPPED it, then was shot. That's def. part of Alex. He also freed Mother of his own will, looking for answers, and she made the infection worse. Alex may be cleaning up the mess, but he's got a lot of death in his wake from both people responsible and people just doing their job.

"What I think would work really well as an answer tho is what you said about preventing him from becoming more of a monster than he already is-- that's, again, something Loki gets and would see as a logical reason to pluck someone out and go "okay you fucked up and we see potential in you but we need to keep you from fucking up again". So stuff with Alex displaying the tendencies you see in him as the ones heading towards monstrous will help head that off for sure." That'll be hard, because the 'monstrous' traits are that he's cold, and not very compassionate. Everything he's done so far on the ship has been because it'll benefit him in some way, even if it seems purely 'helpful'. Ironically, taking his powers away and making him human helped a lot. But he'll definitely be due a breakdown and I'll see about having that be obvious and acting out.

" I apologize if any of this sounds harsh or overly critical. I...made it a special point that no matter how much I love Loki and empathize with his story, I never wanted to make it sound like I thought the worst of what he did was justified and therefore he...didn't actually do anything wrong lmfao. So I'm sensitive to this kind of thing with characters in general, I think. Add on that we legit did have some people on the barge who made very little sense as inmates (and wardens) and Loki starts to panic that he signed on for More Bullshit without realizing, and...yeah. It's a bit of an unreasonable block on my part, I know."

No, it's helpful and I understand entirely. I struggle with that myself sometimes (especially since I also have a Loki muse). It's a hard line to walk empathizing with them bot not justifying or erasing hte bad things they did.

"...Also as I was writing this I realized that Loki is much more likely to press x to doubt that Alex is telling him everything than *I* am, so that will help to keep in mind lmao. *I* know Alex is the protagonist of his game but uh Loki doesn't. Guess I was having some ic/ooc bleed there of a particularly dopey kind. Hope I don't have any human shaped viruses I've been blindly trusting irl..." Let's hope not. But Loki SHOULD doubt him. Compare notes with Lucifer. Take Alex into the SIRE or request his file... :) Alex is definitely a very gray anti-hero at best, even though he's the protag.

Also hashing all this stuff out often helps me. I'm happy to do so.

[shiftedshape]

Yeah I think I got confused on the vial thing, lol. I took "dropped" to mean "accidentally", which is on me, derp.

I'm actually really into the idea of him revealing himself to be mostly self-interested as a way to complicate things! And there's lots of ways to do that, even if he's not, you know, going to steal an ATV on an alien planet and try to escape, lmfao

God, I'm looking forward to permapairs so wardens get some JUICY DETAILS out of those files, man. That'll help with Loki's dumb paranoia a ton, I'm sure :T

Thank you for chatting this out with me. <3 Again I'm sorry if any of it was hurtful. I have a much better understanding now, I think.